Man sentenced in baseball bat attack

WEST CHESTER — Gregory Jon Tompkins is a young man who presents society with a two-sided personality.

One side is that of a kind, thoughtful, generous and loving person, who acts as a role model for his peers and is trusted and cared for by friends, family and employers, the stereotypical “good kid” from a good family, those who know him well said Tuesday.

“He’s is the kind of person who stops on the street and helps the guy who he doesn’t know how to shovel the snow that his car got stuck in,” his mother, Susan Tomkins, told Common Pleas Court Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody.

But the other side is that of a violent man who crushed a teenager’s skull with a baseball bat as the youth stood outside his family’s home, then lied about the incident to state police who were investigating the assault and who subsequently has been arrested on other charges, including the theft from a southern Chester County farm in December of a baby alpaca that later died.

“The facts suggest that Mr. Tompkins is not the person hanging around with a bad crowd” who makes a momentary mistake in the midst of a upstanding life, Assistant District Attorney Alexander E. Gosfield told Cody in her courtroom Tuesday. “Mr. Tompkins is the bad crowd, ready to engage in criminal conduct at the drop of a hat.”

Cody, recognizing his good and bad sides, sentenced Tompkins to 20 months to eight years in state prison on charges of aggravated assault stemming from an incident that occurred in West Grove in March 2012, rejecting the defense’s call for a county prison sentence but also trimming time off the maximum term that Gosfield had urged her to impose.

“You are lucky you are not going to jail for the rest of your life,” Cody told Tompkins, who expressed remorse for assaulting the victim, Ryan Boyd, over a road-rage confrontation the then-17-year-old Boyd had with a friend of Tompkins. “It is only by fortune that you didn’t kill him. You have two sides to you, and he got the bad side of you the night in question.”

Tompkins, 20, of London Grove, pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault in April. He had been arrested by state police in May 2012 following an investigation into the assault on Boyd that sent him to the intensive care unit of Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del., with serious head and brain injuries.

According to facts laid out by Gosfield about the assault and court documents, Tompkins assaulted Boyd as he and a friend stood outside Boyd’s home on Welcome Avenue in the borough around 11 p.m. on March 30, 2012. Tompkins had come to Boyd’s home with five other young men to confront him over a confrontation that reportedly had occurred earlier that night between Boyd and Christian Miller of Lincoln University.

According to Gosfield, Miller and Boyd had argued over who cut whom off on the road, and Miller went to a nearby fast food restaurant and assembled a group of people to further the confrontation at Boyd’s home. Witnesses said they saw the men get out of two automobiles and walk up to Boyd, standing in his front yard. Tompkins, a Little League umpire in the Avon Grove area, hit Boyd in the skull with a bat he had brought with him.

Boyd crumpled to the ground with blood pouring from his head, police said. Someone broke a liquor bottle on his head, and Miller later admitted to kicking him when he was on the ground. The six men then ran from the scene. When police arrived, Boyd was able to speak to them briefly but complained of dizziness and began to vomit. He was transported to the hospital, where he was unconscious for a time.

He sustained a fractured skull, a concussion, bleeding of the brain, and a neck injury. Boyd told Cody that he had been unable to graduate with his classmates at Avon Grove High School, and had to put plans to attend college on hold as he recuperated. He spent “hundreds and hundreds of hours” in rehab, his mother, Laureen Boyd, told the judge.

The emotional and physical impact on Boyd of the attack was clear in Cody’s courtroom. He wept and hyperventilated while attempting to tell the judge what had happened to him. He said migraine headaches and vision problems brought on by the attack continued, and admitted that he had gotten sick and vomited in the men’s room before the sentencing began.

“This has changed the course of my life,” Boyd said. “I will not fully recover from it for at least three years.”

Gosfield, in his comment urging Cody to impose a stiff sentence on Tompkins, said that the men had then assembled elsewhere and concocted a false story about what had happened, blaming Boyd for attacking Tompkins with a tire iron. “That story obviously did not match the injuries to Mr. Boyd or the lack of injuries to Mr. Tompkins.”

In addressing the charges and the prosecution’s case, defense attorney Richard Daubenberger of Media acknowledged that his client had acted badly that night, but said he had taken responsibility for his crimes. He said that Tompkins’ reputation in the community and among his friends and family was exemplar and that he did not deserve to be sent far from his home to serve a lengthy sentence.

“He is a positive influence on the community,” he said of Tompkins.

The defendant did apologize to Boyd for his assault, and told Cody he wanted to put the incident behind him and turn his life around. “I really regret what I did,” he said. “I am trying to make myself a better person. I wish I didn’t go there that night, but I take responsibility for my actions.”

Boyd, in his statement, told Cody that he knew that Tompkins had a good reputation in the community for volunteering and helping people out. But he also said he had heard of violent behavior on the part of the Avon Grove High School graduate.

Gosfield also pointed out that Tompkins is still facing charges of theft and animal cruelty for an incident in which he and another man allegedly stole a baby alpaca from a farm, and for a drug-related driving offense. Those charges have not been resolved.